The porch that Travis built

Travis has taken the opportunity this summer to work on the house. Especially since this is the last full summer we have here and his work schedule is ten trillion million times better. So far he has laid new floor in the mud room, put in raised flower beds and planted new grass, put up new gutters around the garage, fixed our bathroom sink, tightened up the deck railing and other various odds and ends that needed to get done. A few weeks ago he tore up the old front porch. The old one was build with regular 2x4s and just painted over (and slightly crooked). Well, they rotted through. At one point it was so bad that the mailman wouldn't deliver the mail. So Travis had to do a quick fix. He decided that there were so many leftover pieces from the upstairs deck that he would just use those. It worked great! After he put up a sturdy, level base using treated wood (wood that isn't going to rot!) he used the deck odds and ends as the floor and used the same railing as the upstairs deck. It turned out mighty fine.

Here you can the the brick work design of the floor of the porch:

Here is a picture of Dynomite sitting on the porch. That monkey is what she sleeps with. She like to read him stories. On the left side of the picture are our pumpkin plants.
Next he is going to paint the exposed wood and put white lattice in the front. But he did a great job and even exceeded my expectations...as usual.